Are you referring to Duty as noted for Age of Rebellion, or Obligation?

Obligation's been hit or miss with the fanbase, with some GMs and players loving it, and others loathing it.

Personally, I think it works well for the grittier feel of EotE, where every PC has a backstory and a past that's still got hooks in the character. It's akin to the D6 Smuggler template starting out with a big debt to a loanshark as the trade-off for having a starship of their own.

It's also similar to the "sordid past" that many noir characters have, and a source for potential plot hooks in the campaign, particularly as the players try to find ways to reduce their Obligations, or even just something to spring an unexpected encounter into a session. A few campaigns I've played in have had my character's Obligation trigger, and the GM used it each time to insert an interesting encounter (not necessarily combat-related) into the session as well as having the Strain Threshold penalty apply.

That said, if you want to deep-six the mandatory starting Obligation, you can certainly do so. Instead, allow those players that want some extra starting XP or credits to take some Obligation, but if a player is fine with what the character starts with on both counts, then they've lived a clean life and don't have any Obligation. The group could still start with a ship, but perhaps it really is tied to a single character rather than being a group-owned resource.